Last night Mr. 9 year old requested “Underworld: Evolution” as the family movie. What can I say, boys his age, Werewolves and Vampires? I glanced at the R rating, as he popped in with “Mom, its like a Van Helsing movie, I know all about the Dracula legends.”
What 9 year old boy wouldn’t totally dig this monster?
We rolled eyes and agreed to it, knowing full well the B status flick for which we were in store… a Flying Laura Croft with fangs.
I’m not a big fan of him seeing people kill people, in both video games or movies, but hell, mythical creatures? Orcs, aliens, etc?
Not really a big deal. He sees it unflinchingly, yet gets teary eyed that in every Western “Why do they always have to kill the horses?”
It had way more graphic violence than I expected, but in for a penny, in for a pound.
I mentioned more than a few times, “This is so fake,” just to kind of gloss over the blood spill to him.
But I let him watch it. He thought it was pretty cool. Then came the gratuitous sex. Regular loving sex, not like a rape scene on SVU, that I would naturally bar his young eyes from seeing. I don’t ever want him to equate violence with love. I flinched.
Fucking GET THIS!
I found myself covering his eyes.
Reflexively.
I just goddamned motherfucking reinforced the thought of sex as dirty and violence as okay in my own goddamned livingroom.
OK, they drank each others blood, shot eachother at point blank range, sliced heads in half, stabbed each other through the heart, sliced throats and pushed fanged hands through chests….
And I actually said “You probably don’t want to see this…” when the sex started. To which he replied “Naw, not really Mom.”
Followed by the comic relief, when he said “Its not like I don’t know sex is okay, I know you and Dad had sex, you know, back a long time ago when you were teenagers, thats how you got me!”
Buwahahaha, “No, dear, we were grown ups, not teenagers when you were conceived.” Sex, he gets, math, apparently not so much.
This all took several seconds before I realized what I had done.
After all the ranting I have done as of late about female parts NOT being dirty, not being “words not to mention in polite company” and the fuckeduppeditude of the Judeo-Christian repressiveness in this country; like a horrible parent I fucking caught myself doing it.
I responded in part to Ed at WWL this morning:
Honest to god….We are the only species on the planet that are afraid and shamed of our own body parts, thats not being “civilized” its being repressed.
Does a dog blush when it poops?
In all honesty, I caught myself covering my kids eyes last night in a part of a movie that had a sexual encounter (not too graphic, a little boobie and mostly his back) and realized I had just let him see some werewolves get slaughtered by vampires. (9 yr old boy)
It is so fucking ingrained into our society & upbringing, that me of all people started to reinforce the myth violence is ok, and normal human interaction, sex is “bad”.
I could have smacked myself up the metaphorical head for it.
Words aren’t bad, sex isn’t bad, and naked human form isn’t dirty.
War, killing, repression and exploitation of humans is.
Thats what we are fighting, and the rest is leftover judeo-christian bullshit baggage, and I for one am sick to death of it.
When so-called feminists say naming our body parts is bad, they perpetuate our “dirtiness” as women, when they say naming the fact that people do what people do is taboo…
my head just explodes.
I mean I could give a fuck who either one of the Clintons fuck, and no one else should either, but we live in this country of ultra-repression mixed with ultra-teasing, and that is why it becomes relevant.
Sharks to the feeding frenzy.
My neighbor’s stepdaughter is 20, and a good friend of ours. Born in Canada, where nudity on TV is so commonplace they don’t even notice it, she finds Americans ridiculously confused about our bodies and sexuality.
She is right.
*********************
The Post Script:
The next movie that came on was “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid”
Quite a bit of nudity in that one too, but we said nothing this time, and Jake didn’t even seem to notice or care.
He was more worried about the innocent horses of bad guys having to die.
Good kid.
*************************
De-programming happens slowly, I guess.
I just had hoped not to program him wrong in the first place.
Fuck.
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Dear Diane,
Walk the Walk, babe.
and talk the talk with him often.
Love,
Diane.
… it may be more primal than that, not so much hypocrisy … but I can’t prove it!
Reminded me of what happened between me and my niece many years ago, she was 16 at the time.
I was a big party girl in the 80s and my niece both knew that and thought I was “cool” because of that.
We went to a bar, I was her chaperone. We were sitting and talking when a fellow came up to her.
I wanted to kill him. It was such a primal feeling that I was surprised and shocked by it. I also felt I was being hypocritical in basically expecting my niece to never, ever, be touched by a man! Aarrrggghh!
I spoke with her about that and she found it hilarious that I would feel that way.
Sex is a very powerful force. If we are with someone we love who is younger and still “innocent,” I think we have a natural protective and fierce desire to shield them from that force. As to why, I have no idea. But I think it’s more than just conditioning, though you make a good point about that as well and it’s no doubt true.
I am an RN. One night I was in my room doing my assessment on a nice friendly kid and his father when a “word” in a movie came up. I would say he was about six or seven. The Dad thought he was letting Junior watch a nice non-challenging “kid” movie. So, the kid says to me “what is jerking off”? Dad went about fifty shades of red and I thought Oh hell no I am not having the sex talk with somebody else’s kid. I dodged. It is nothing really to do with the movie, hey did you see that big dog?
But, he said, Dad knows what it is. I continue dodging… Want some ice cream? Fine says the kid, I am asking Mom. A few minutes later Dad dashed out of the room to send a panicked phone call to his wife about the big question Junior planned to ask when she returned.
For a different take on religion.
http://www.brasschecktv.com/pa…
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For a different take on sex,
http://www.visitcopenhagen.com/
that it’s okay to be a little uncomfortable about sex when it comes to your kids.
part of our job to want to make sure kids are ready. just trying to get as much foundation building in as possible before the world intrudes on your child.
i don’t think it’s sex per se, but myriad things that could harm your child before they are ready for the encounter.
seeing as i decided this weekend to cease and desist on the openness about sex, and try ‘body shame’… 😉
…I think it’s worse than that…kids see how people live in their bodies, I think, way more than adults seem to. So it’s not like any overt behaviors are required to cause irrevocable harm :}
I think you may be being too hard on yourself, and maybe not trusting enough of the natural durability of kids.
I mean, we all grew up with attitudes about sex that you describe here, right? So, have we got any celibate adults on the list? Sex isn’t dirty, and we learn that
When it comes to parenting, there are two sayings I really like. One is a Chinese saying
the other is from Maya Angelou